{"id":206957,"date":"2021-03-20T02:41:35","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T23:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/tourists-coming-back-to-business-starved-nyc\/"},"modified":"2021-03-20T02:41:35","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T23:41:35","slug":"tourists-coming-back-to-business-starved-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/tourists-coming-back-to-business-starved-nyc\/","title":{"rendered":"#Tourists coming back to business-starved NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Tourists coming back to business-starved NYC<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Tourists are finally starting to take a bite of the Big App<\/a>le again. <\/p>\n

After a year-long COVID-19 lockdown turned the city into a virtual ghost town, a steady stream of visitors is once again checking into hotels, gaping up at skyscrapers and asking New Yorkers which way Fifth Avenue is, hospitality industry insiders said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to come here,\u201d said Sarah Haskins of Dallas, TX as she posed for a street portrait in Times Square with her new husband Harold on Friday.<\/p>\n

They were spending their honeymoon in the Big Apple \u201cjust to see something different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pandemic has been going on for a while now. We\u2019re kind of used to it. We know the precautions to take,\u201d Haskins said. \u201cThe pandemic is the same no matter where you go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hotel occupancy in the Big Apple hit 47 percent for the week of Mar. 7 to Mar. 13 \u2013 the highest weekly average for Gotham since late June, according to STR,\u00a0a data firm that tracks the hospitality industry.<\/p>\n

Last Saturday night, that figure jumped to 61.5 percent, a significant rise from the January figures of 38 percent, but still well under pre-pandemic figures of 87 percent, STR said.<\/p>\n

More pedestrians have also started to flood into Times Square, according to Tom Harris, the acting president and chief operating officer at the Times Square Alliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last week we\u2019ve noticed an uptick,\u201d said Harris.<\/p>\n

Raul Fernandez of Puerto Rico was among those tourists in Times Square Friday.<\/p>\n

\"Raul
Raul Raul Fernandez with members of his family visit Times Square from Puerto Rico.
\n<\/figcaption>
Daniel William McKnight<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI feel comfortable, safe. Everybody uses a mask, takes care of each other,\u201d said Fernandez, who was visiting the city with his family for the first time.<\/p>\n

They made sure to hit up the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center and even some museums.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why we came here \u2013 for tourism,\u201d Fernandez said.<\/p>\n

New York City\u2019s hotel occupancy \u201chas been improving each week,\u201d said Nick Minerd, a spokesman for STR, which is based in Tennessee.<\/p>\n

Since September, foot traffic in Times Square has been \u201chovering around\u201d 100,000 people per day, Harris noted.<\/p>\n

Harris attributed the 15 percent increase in foot traffic to \u201ca combination of things \u2013 nicer weather, more [coronavirus vaccine] shots in people\u2019s arms and an easing up of some of the [COVID-19 safety] restrictions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tourists
Tourists flock to the Disney store in Times Square.
\n<\/figcaption>
Daniel William McKnight<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He predicted that as even more coronavirus restrictions get lifted in the Big Apple and even more people get vaccinated against COVID-19 \u201cthat\u2019s going to lead to more visitors to New York City.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s tourism bureau, NYC & Company, said that it expects to gain more than half of the visitors to the city back this year as compared to 2019 and that last weekend\u2019s hotel occupancy was the \u201cbest\u201d the Big Apple has had in nearly a year.<\/p>\n

In 2019, 66.6 million tourists visited in the city and that figure plunged in 2020 to 22.3 million as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to NYC & Company which projects that it will see an increase of 36.4 million visitors in 2021.<\/p>\n

Still, the current stats for the city\u2019s hotel occupancy and pedestrians roaming around Times Square is a far cry from where those figures were at pre-pandemic.<\/p>\n

Hotel occupancy in the city was at 87.1 percent for a comparable week in March of 2019, according to STR.<\/p>\n

\"A
A visiting family takes a selfie in Times Square.
\n<\/figcaption>
Daniel William McKnight<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And before the global health crisis that killed nearly 40,000 New Yorkers, there were about 365,000 people per day walking through Times Square, Harris said.<\/p>\n

That number plummeted to 35,000 people per day last April as the pandemic shut down the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be back,\u201d Harris declared. \u201cThe best days are coming for Times Square and New York City.\u201d<\/p>\n

NYC & Company spokesman Christopher Heywood also expressed optimism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ship is turning and our recovery will be gradual, but certain,\u201d he said.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Tourists coming back to business-starved NYC” Tourists are finally starting to take a bite of the Big Apple again. After a year-long COVID-19 lockdown turned the city into a virtual ghost town, a steady stream of visitors is once again checking into hotels, gaping up at skyscrapers and asking New Yorkers which way Fifth Avenue…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":206958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/03\/new-york-tourism-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[98436,1545,70344,82862,4969,4953,98670,70756,71470],"class_list":["post-206957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-3-19-21","tag-coronavirus","tag-coronavirus-in-ny","tag-covid-vaccine","tag-hotels","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc-reopens","tag-times-square","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}